


The Slave And The Shadow

by Coldsaturn



Category: Bellarke - Fandom, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Bellamy is like a godfather, Clarke is sassy, Conditioning, Explicit Sex, F/M, Humiliation, I'm inserting tags for the next chapters too, Slave Training, Slave auction, Slow Build, Slow Burn, TPE-Total Power Exchange, a kinky godfather, age gap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-01-27 00:56:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1709087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldsaturn/pseuds/Coldsaturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world of massive nuclear wars, Clarke becomes the bearer of the ultimate weapon. Not knowing who the enemy is anymore, she has no choice but to entrust her life to the very man who kidnapped her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clarke is one of those children who should feel lucky. Her family has given the world some of its most brilliant academics for three centuries, and the last generation stands with its head held high among the ancestors.

Abby, her mother, is a doctor whose research on cancer is leading medicine closer than ever to a definitive cure. Her father, an engineer, specialized in building machines able to quicken radioactive decay. Unfortunately she barely remembers him. He died when she was only 4, and even then she used to see him only during Christmas.

Clarke's grandparents had died after the Second Nuclear War, so she can easily understand why both her mother and father had decided to devote their whole life to the anti-nuclear cause.

The problem they seemed to ignore, however, is that they do live in a world that depends fully on nuclear energy, both for economy and war. If you go out and declare that you're discovering the cure for cancer or that you know how to dispose of radiations 35 years in advance, those big companies out there won't just give you a pat on the shoulder. They will try to buy you to shut you up or kill you. They will earn your trust and then use your research against you and everything you're fighting for.

But despite the sudden and incredibly suspicious death of her father, Clarke's mother has never stopped doing what she thinks is right. Clarke respects her for that, really. Filial love at its finest.

She loves and admires her so frigging much that she'd like to become like her. She'd start becoming like her this very moment, if only she wasn't tied to a chair, blindfolded, and understandably pissed off.

"Fuck, not this again." She groans, testing the ropes binding her wrists behind the back of the chair. The light jolt of pain through her arms suggests that she's not been unconscious long enough to cut off the circulation. 2 hours at most. She still has her hands closed in fists, and she hides a smile.

She's been kidnapped so many times and still they haven't learned that ropes are easy. Relaxing her hands the space between her skin and the rope increases, letting her right hand move upward. She had fractured two bones in each hand when she was 7 for the sole purpose of rolling through tight ropes and handcuffs. She doesn't feel her fingers wet or crusty, so hopefully she hasn't started bleeding--

"Hey, I think she just spoke."

\--Yet.

She hears rustling in the direction of the unknown voice and a loud bang against what seems like a metallic door. She almost sighs in relief. Metallic screams city job, and if she's still in the city then this little holiday will end soon.

She hears the handle clicks and the squeaking of the door being opened. Steps come closer and she feigns sleep.

"Cut the crap out, I know you're awake. What did you say?" The voice is different this time, most probably belonging to the guy who just entered the room. She quickly catalogues his rough timbre, the baritone vibration behind his words, his breath coming deep but a little too fast.

Either he was away when he was called or he was distressed for some reason. Guy #1 hadn't raised his voice to call him, but maybe he had used a radio. Still, the idea of Guy#2 rushing over here to greet her is fairly pleasant, so she chooses to adopt it as the official version, until further notice.

"I said, Fuck-not-this-again" she replies lifting her head toward the probable position of Guy#2.

"Used to these little detours?" Guy#2 asks with more than just a hint of mockery in his voice.

"Happens at least twice a year."

She shakes her head to move a curl that had fallen right against her nose when she had yanked her arms. It stays in place and she huffs. "Listen, can you please remove the blindfold? I see so many of you thugs that I confuse your faces anyway. How much do you want?"

Everything falls in silence for several moments, until she feels hands brushing the back of her head, touching the knot of the blinder. She flinches instinctively, she hadn't heard the guy move.

The mask slides up, dragging that damn curl out of the way, and stops at the top of her forehead. She finds herself face to face with a smirk on full lips. Her breath catches. Not only had he moved, he is also leaning over her, and she hadn't heard a single thing.

"Hey, you're good." She doesn't even try to hide her awe. It's so rare to find a decent kidnapper nowadays, that she feels a little touched.

Guy#2 grins and this time she meets his gaze. Then she looks at his dark curls matching the color of his eyes, the thin bridge of his nose, the perfect line of his teeth, the dimple in his chin.  
Well, damn.

"Do you always eye fuck your kidnapper?" His voice vibrates louder now that she has a mouth to accompany it with.

"You try spending your adolescence with thieves and assassins chasing after you, then tell me how vanilla you come out."

He snorts, stepping back until she can look at his muscled body.

Clarke has to force herself not to stare too much. Last time she had flirted with an assassin he had been killed when the police had burst in to save her, and she had been sad for a whole week.

"So, Hotstuff, how much money do you want to let me go?"

He raises one eyebrow, and she doesn't know if he's confused for his new nickname or because she assumed he wanted money.

"I don't want any, Princess." He replies and she frowns. Where had that horrible name come from? He nods pointing somewhere above her face and she remembers of the blindfold at the top of her head. A crown. It's so stupid that she worries he finds his name so disgusting that he just had to retaliate.

"What then?"

"You're stuck here with us," he gestures at Guy#1 "until your mother gives to our boss something she stole. If she doesn't return it, you're worse than dead."

So not nice. She suddenly doesn't find him that gorgeous anymore.

"And are you sure that she is the one who took it?"

"What the fuck do we know? Ask _her_." Finally Guy#1 finds his voice again, and she realizes that she still hasn't graced him with a single look. She quickly fixes her mistake, glancing at him. Pale blue eyes with a full mouth and an elegant haircut.

"Where did they find you two, in a fucking models magazine?"

"Is she for real?" an incredulous Guy#1 turns to Hotstuff for help.

"You're fucking up my names, I can't call you Hotstuff#2!"

"Ok, I'm out. You can keep an eye on the horny kid alone, call if you need me." Hotstuff#2 is amazingly short-tempered, tiring someone out in 5 minutes flat must be her new record. He heads for the door and even slams it shut behind him. Well, that was easy. One down.

Clarke waits for Hotstuff to look at the door, apparently as baffled by his companion as she is, then gives a hard yank at her arms, freeing herself from the ropes.

"Don't even think about it." He mutters still looking away. What the fuck is he?

"Scared of a little fight?" Clarke mocks him, hoping to distract him. She needs to rethink this, he's obviously too skilled for her.

"No, you don't have to fight me because I'm here to help you."

Wait, what.

Hotstuff turns toward her and kneels at her side, recovering the ropes. He gives her a small smile and then ties her again. Another record: free for 25 seconds.

"Your mother asked Mr.Kane for help, and he hired me to protect you. This time your mother is really in danger, and 'we'--" he gestures at the door "--have to make her talk by ruining you."

"Did she really steal that thing?"

"Yes and no. But they won't find it, because it's in your body."

"Say what?!" she was going to scream the question until she noticed how his face was giving the clear message: I will shut you up and you won't like it. In the end she just hisses like a cat.

"It's a microchip your dad stole from the company he was working in, and she implanted it in you when you were 4. Your dad made them believe he had swallowed it and they killed him to retrieve it."

She feels her head starts to ache. "But why now, they knew he didn't have the thing."

"He did swallow a fake microchip. It gave them the right data for years, so they didn't notice anything strange until yesterday, when a specific key code was supposed to work and it didn't."

"Why do you know all this? It would be too dangerous revealing so much to a hired bodyguard. How stupid do you think I am?" If he's bullshitting her, she will ruin him.

He smiles, genuinely this time. He looks proud and Clarke does her best not to bask in his expression. "Mr.Kane knew about what your parents were doing and assigned me to you. I’ve been making sure no one gets you for the right reasons since you were 5."

"Holy shit!" If he's telling the truth, it means that her parents were involved in so much more than ecology and drugs. It would also mean that he let her get kidnapped more than 20 times during the last 12 years. That fucker.

Clarke doesn't know if she should really trust him, but somehow his words ring true.

"Ok, assuming that I believe you...and now?" She looks at him and sees nothing but concern on his face. He stands up and tilts his head toward the door, his lips pursed in a thin line.

"And now you're in deep shit."

The backhander he gives her is so hard that she blacks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BackgroundNotes: 
> 
> -Kane is CEO at one of the major drug companies of the State. He gives the largest part of the donations Abby receives for her researches.  
> -Kane and Jake (Griffin) met at the university. They became close friends after accidentally becoming roommates.  
> -The day before Clarke's current kidnapping, all the screens of the two biggest companies dealing in nuclear weapons went black, and a white "Suck it up" in Comic Sans appeared at the centre.  
> -Abby never told Jake where she put the microchip in Clarke, in case Jake was taken.  
> -Clarke has been kidnapped 24 times in 12 years. 16 times for ransom, 4 times for retaliation from minor drug companies, 3 attempted torture+murder, 1 mistake - they wanted the mayor's daughter.  
> -Hotstuff#1 is Bellamy  
> -Hotstuff#2 is Murphy  
> -Clarke is 17, Bellamy is 31.
> 
>  
> 
> A bear hug to the lovely and amazing [Zoadgo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo) for editing it. 
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks to anyone who will read it, comment it, _kudos it_ , ignore it etc.  
> Feel totally free to contact me here or on [my tumblr!](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains "light" mental torture/humiliation and conditioning.  
> It's definitely getting darker, and you won't be seeing the light any time soon.

 

 

As ridiculous as it may sound, reality comes back galloping. The sounds, the light reddening her eyelids, the feeling of being stuck in a horribly uncomfortable position; everything returns in rhythmic waves. It takes her several seconds to realize that it's her throbbing head the responsible for the boat-in-a-storm effect.

 

She tries to open her eyes but manages to barely flinch her left eyelid. The right side of her face feels odd and Clarke is one minute away from panic when she remembers what happened. Hotstuff#1 apparently being her hero and then bitchslapping her to sleep.  
He's so affectionate.

 

She does a general check up of her body out of habit, but doesn't find anything out of place apart from her swollen, and probably black, eye. A groan escapes her dry throat as she forces her left eye open. Her gaze falls immediately on a dark figure in the room, and she jolts on the chair, the ropes cutting deeper into her wrists.

 

"Finally awake, sleeping beauty?" She recognize Hotstuff#2's voice and she relaxes. Her hero better stay away from her for a while.

 

"C-can I have so...me water?" With her throat resembling a desert after a sandstorm, talking takes her several attempts at moving her tongue inside the mouth.

 

Hotstuff#2 gets up from his spot on the floor and goes silently behind her, rummaging into something that sounds like a bag. Apparently behind her there's a whole bunch of stuff that she didn't know existed. Good to know.

 

He walks back to her and offers a small bottle of water without the cap.

Clarke does her best to give him the are-you-dumb look, and it seems like she succeeds, because he snorts and brings the bottle to his lips. He takes a long sip and Clarke wonders if it's part of her torture playing tease&denial with basic goods, before he quickly grabs her cheeks with one hand and squeezes, forcing her lips to pout and open, then he leans down. She doesn't have the time to feel shocked for the kiss, because he opens his mouth and water falls down her throat, almost choking her.

 

The coughing fit she gets after makes him smile as if it were exactly what he wanted to accomplish.

 

"What the hell, man!?" Clarke tries to shout, managing only a groggy exclamation.

 

"You asked for water, you got water. I won't spoon-feed you." He shrugs returning to his favourite spot on the floor.

 

Clarke tries to imagine what it will be like once they decide it's time to feed her something solid, and the thought alone is enough to make her shudder in disgust.

 

“What can I call you?" She changes topic, temporarily distracting her brain from more pressing matters.

 

"What?" He sounds pissed off and she has barely opened her mouth. For some reason, he hates her.

 

"Tell me what to call you. I need a name." She replies leaning imperceptibly forward, accentuating the slim line of her torso. He looks at her without a hint of interest in his eyes, and she fights the urge to sigh in frustration.

 

"Murphy."

 

There's no way to know if it's his real name or not, so she accepts his answer, smiling. "Murphy, ok. I can work with that."

 

"You don't have to work with anything, you just have to shut up!" He snaps back, raising his voice, then he stands up and goes out of the room, leaving her confused and with her heart jumping madly in her chest.

 

\---

 

The next time Murphy comes back in the room, he's holding a small plate. Her dinner consists of chicken broth, with the meat cut in small pieces and the liquid resembling water both in colour and taste. There's no spoon.

Clarke was right.

 

Murphy takes a small morsel with his hand, puts it in his mouth and then grabs her by the neck to smash their lips together, his wet finger staining her skin. She's so disgusted that she whimpers, but she takes the meat anyway, thinking that refusing food is not going to help her. Still, of all the kidnappings she has gone through during her life, this one is definitely the worst and most disturbing. She can't understand why she's being treated this way, it's not like it will change her mother's mind if she's determined to not give them whatever it is that they want.

 

As Murphy takes another piece of chicken, she remembers what her supposed bodyguard and lord savior had said to her: she will be worse than dead.

He starts chewing and whatever food she had forced down her throat threatens to come back up.

 

They are not going to make Abby talk by threatening her to kill her daughter. They will force her to speak by making her daughter wish she was dead. And despite the life she has lived that proves her she's a tough rival, there are infinite ways to break her.

 

Murphy raises his eyebrows mimicking a satisfied expression while chewing what seems to be the most delicious piece of meat ever existed, judging by his face. He leans over and she turns her head away, her stomach turning upside down and her head spinning as if it couldn't choose between making her faint or throw up.

 

She does none of those and he joins their mouths once again. She tries to break contact but he keeps her face still and pushes his tongue inside her mouth.

She's ready to throw up the moment she touches the chewed mess, but what passes inside her mouth is a perfectly intact little bite. Her eyes shots up to meet his and he pulls back, smiling. The relief washing over her is enough to make the chicken taste like the best meal she has ever had.

Clarke hears him laughing quietly and doesn't understand why he goes away without letting her finish the whole plate, until she realizes that she's crying.

 

\---

 

The food ritual goes on another 4 times and the water thing another 5, but she can't seem to calculate the time between one meal and the other one. Apparently they're being completely random with it, and if their goal is to make her lose her sense of time, they're doing a great job so far.

 

Clarke wouldn't be able to concentrate on the fact anyway, because she's still tied to the damn chair and her whole body aches as if it were trying to break free, literally. The constant throbbing in her every joint makes her breathe faster, which consequently makes her drive directly into hyperventilation and there you have your homemade panic attack.

 

Luckily she's still conscious enough to realize what is happening, even more aware because the more oxygen she shoots into her brain, the more half of her face seems to swell and pulsate.

 

Hotstuff#1 still hasn't visited once since their kinky session, and Clarke doesn't know if she should be happy or disappointed. Sure thing is that she hadn't trusted him then, and she still doesn't trust him now. She knows better than to believe whatever escapes from the mouth of someone paid to torture you.

 

She suddenly remembers of one of her kidnappers trying to make her go into his car by telling her that he was her long lost father. She had laughed in his face and they had beaten the crap out of her later, but it still had been worth it. It still makes her giggle.

 

The door opens and Murphy comes in. Clarke is about to ask him where the other one has gone, when she notices that he's not carrying anything. It's not meal time.

Her whole skin burst into goosebumps, the sweat already chilling her back.

 

He stops in front of her, a dark tower with a flash of white teeth. He is the nightmare every child is terrorized by.

 

Clarke gulps loudly as he stands there without doing absolutely anything aside from depriving her of oxygen and light. She looks around her trying to understand if he's waiting for something, if there's someone with him she hadn't noticed. Really, anything.

But they are the only ones in the room, and he is still there, looking at her as if he was waiting for something.

 

After a few very confusing minutes, she opens her mouth to ask him what he wants. She hasn't even let out the first sound when he slaps her on her already injured cheekbone.

Clarke cries out, recoiling from the next blow, sure that she's about to be beaten, but nothing happens. When she opens her eyes and dares to look at him, he is still standing there against the light. The creepy smile still on.

 

The seconds become minutes and minutes seems to become hours as they stare at each other without saying anything. But of course it's Clarke again breaking the silence, too confused by what's happening to just keep her mouth shut. As soon as she opens her mouth to speak, Murphy hits her again, in the exact same spot. It hurts so much that her stomach rolls, her headache suddenly greeting her after some hours of peace.

 

Even though she thinks she's a pretty intelligent girl, it takes her three more slaps to understand that she has to shut up, because every single time she tries to say something Murphy will slap it out of her. She doesn't understand why, but in the end she guesses that it's not important. The only thing that matters is the simple passage: talking---being slapped.

 

And even though she thinks that Murphy is a psycho, she has to admit that he's sharp, because he seems to sense when she has accepted their new rule and leaves the room.

 

With all the spare time she has, the only thing Clarke can still do is think. And in this exact moment she feels she has a huge load of information she doesn't know how to interpret. It's clear that Murphy is trying to make her act in a certain way, but the problem is that she doesn't know what she’s supposed to do. Not when he demands her to already know the rules and starts punishing her out of nowhere when he decides that there is yet another rule and she doesn’t know anything about it.

 

She had wanted Hotstuff#1 to be away from her so she could try to connect on some level with Murphy, finding out if there was rivalry between them, which one of the two was the most likely to be seduced, how to make them turn one against the other. But now she greatly regrets not having the other guy with her. At least he had been gentle, for a while.

 

Not finding anything else to do to pass the time, she lowers her head till her chin touches her chest and closes her eyes, waiting for a dreamless sleep to take her away.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the charming-cupcake-under-a-majestic-ray-of-sunshine [Zoadgo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo), for editing it. 
> 
> And obviously thanks to anyone who will read it, comment it, _kudos it_ , ignore it etc.  
> Feel totally free to contact me here or on [my tumblr](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com)!


	3. Chapter 3

 

Murphy becomes tolerable once Clarke starts following his hints. As long as she does what he wants, he's pretty much a quiet and modest guy. If she were to count three meals a day, this would already be her sixth one being captive, but something tells her that the pattern is irregular. Sometimes the usual chicken broth comes when her stomach is rumbling so much that she's sure she will start digesting herself, whereas twice she was forced to eat again by the time she'd finished counting to 100.

 

Once the hit on her face develops in a full blown bruise, avoiding other slaps becomes something she really needs to do, therefore the decision of taking seriously the whole "I will do what you want" thing.

 

She's not doing that bad so far, if Murphy's behaviour is anything to go by. He now talks to her everytime he comes in her room, greeting her and repeating like a broken record that she has to shut up and keep her eyes down or she'll get punished. Someone would think that by know she's learned her lesson and there's no need for the constant reminder, but he's a meticulous guy and he’s probably making sure that she doesn't forget it and accidentally get herself hurt.

 

The meal routine is something she doesn't have problems with anymore, her lips opening automatically in compliance when he comes with a plate. She had earned a "Good girl" the first time she had done it, and only biting her tongue had prevented her from laughing.   
Clarke still doesn’t know if she was making fun of him or herself for being happy about it.

 

The problem with being silent all the time is that she's forced to keep herself company, and she had never understood just how much she longed for human contact in her life. Now the only one who can hear her voice is herself--because Murphy not even once had requested an answer from her--and she's quickly getting anxious about it. As soon as she starts contemplating paying the price and being hit just to have the satisfaction of saying something to someone, she knows she’s giving up control over her mind.

 

Clarke tries to remember that she needs to be on alert if she doesn't want to lose herself. Habits grow fast, and conditioning even more. Succumbing to the easy rhythm of echoing patterns would grant her peace, but what would be the price?

  
  
So she gives what Murphy wants, screaming into her head that she will do whatever it takes to stay alive and unharmed. Physical blows are hard for a girl to block, but with the psychological shit he’s throwing at her, she just has to keep her barriers and pretend she’s submitting wholeheartedly. How hard is that, really? She’s used to lie, she’s lived among criminals for her whole life. She knows how to handle this, and it’s only until her mother will find a way to save her.

  
  
Looking down at her body, Clarke sighs, failing at hiding a small hiccup at the end. Not a single tear has yet fallen from her eyes, but somehow her body has found a way to act as if she had already broken down in desperation.

 

The room feels way colder, now that she’s naked. That is the latest rule Murphy had decided to introduce 4 meals ago, and it actually had made her earn another “Good girl”, when she had let him strip her without even flinching. She had bitten her tongue until she had tasted copper, but the satisfied look in Murphy’s eyes had been worth the pain.

  
  
Despite the obvious panic, she hasn’t yet received the attention she was expecting. Everything is going on like her being covered only in skin is something completely unremarkable. Clarke can’t hide the wave of disappointment surging through her body; she’s used to get what she wants thanks to her look. She has survived all these years by turning her features in weapons and distractions, and with Hotstuff#1-the-hero she knows it would have worked. It wouldn’t have taken her more than two days to arise in him the will to protect her, and from that moment on, the rest of her vacation would have been a piece of cake. Instead she has to see Murphy everyday, who is as asexual as a human can get.

  
  
The door clicks open and she readily darts her gaze on the floor, a point between her and the entrance suddenly drawing all her attention. She hears Murphy coming closer and the ingress slamming shut behind him. A pair of boots come into view and Clarke frowns. Murphy’s feet should be a little smaller than this, shouldn’t they?

  
  
“Clarke…” the pained tone in his voice makes her heart lose two beats. Is this another one of her fantasies? She dares to look up, and a freckled face framed with curly dark hair is staring back at her. His face is a mask of pity and worry, instantly making her pride rise in indignance.

  
  
“Hey Hotstuff, been on a vacation?” Somehow she manages to sound like she’s just been bored during his absence.

  
  
Hotstuff#1 blinks several times, then kneels at her feet and lays his hands on her knees. Clarke shuts her legs, not wanting to give him a happy flash in such an emotional moment. He sighs, brushing absentmindedly her skin.

 

“I was sent away for a minor mission. I think my boss was trying to keep me away from you.” His voice breaks at the end of the sentence, and Clarke finds herself believing him, despite everything. He looks genuinely distraught at her current physical condition. “Am I too late?” He asks in a whisper, looking at her as if he could tear the answers he needs from her eyes. 

 

Clarke doesn’t really know what to say to him. Nothing bad really happened to her, not the kind of bad she was imagining at the beginning. But she’s not ok, either. “I don’t know.” She opts for the truth, for it’s the easiest thing to think about when she can’t turn away from his gaze.

 

“Did he…” He kindly lets her imagination end the question. For several seconds she’s busy calculating what is the most convenient answer. If she tells him that she’s been raped by Murphy, will he get mad? Will he avenge her? Will they fight? The problem is that she still doesn’t know what kind of power she can have over him, and as long as that variable stays unknown, the risk is just too high. She shakes her head, marvelling at how his shoulders slump in relief. If he’s acting, he’s good at it.

 

“I won’t leave you again.” He says, and Clarke focuses her attention on the door on the other side of the room, refusing to look at him. “Clarke, look at me.” Murphy could come in at any moment now, and if he doesn’t find her in the correct position he will beat her again. She has to avoid the beatings, it’s easier staying bound to the chair all day without bruises. “Clarke!” His hands grab her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. He pulls her toward him until her shoulders give her a protest, reminding her that she still has her wrist tied together behind the backrest. “I won’t leave you. You hear me?” 

 

Clarke feels her eyes fill with tears and she doesn’t know if she’s more annoyed to herself for being this weak, or to him for being an untrustworthy bastard. How can she risk believing him, with the situation she’s in? He’s the one who’s supposed to care for her enough to screw up, not her being the naive little princess who thinks that there’s good in everyone. “Yeah.” She answers mechanically.

 

He purses his lips, clearly not satisfied by her answer, but he doesn’t complain. His thumbs caress her cheeks and Clarke has to swallow down a whimper. How much time has passed since the last time the human contact she gets is a normal and kind one? Such a simple touch now makes her wonder what is she losing in exchange for it. With Murphy it had been her clothes, apparently.

  
  
“Ok, listen, I’ll try and take my partner’s place with your training, so I can keep a closer eye on you.” He stands up, stepping back when he notices that Clarke has no intention of lifting her head. She feels his hand leaning on her nape, a warm touch of comfort melting her spine. He’s so kind, how can she believe him? It’s just ridiculous. But getting him instead of Murphy can turn on her advantage; not only does she openly like Hotstuff#1 more, but he also has the wonderful habit of saying too much. _Training_. She was right when she thought that Murphy was trying to make her act in a certain way, but the real question is: why?

  
  
“I’ll see if I can come later to bring you _dinner_ , alright?” His fingers touch lightly her neck, before he steps back and goes out of the room.

  
  
Clarke doesn’t dare move an inch of her body, her brain going a mile per minute. Is he for real? First the training, now the hint of the time, plus the useful information that Murphy hasn’t told him that she knows his ‘name’. All these slips don’t add up to the image she had of him: the dark ninja, crawling at her back without making a sound, always in control of his surroundings. How is it possible that suddenly he can’t seem to finish one single sentence without letting escape some serious information he definitely shouldn’t be sharing with her?

 

_Unless he’s telling the truth._

  
  
If he really were her protector, then it would be just logical for him to tell her as much as he can, wouldn’t it?   
Still, no matter how many times she tries to wrap her mind around the situation, Clarke fails to get any kind of answer and is left there waiting, surrounded by the ringing in her ears and her slightly labored breathing, the fear that trusting him is her only possible choice choking her with hope and dread.    
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited by the amazing [Zoadgo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo), as usual. And a huge sorry for the really late update! 
> 
> Thanks to anyone who will read it, comment it, _kudos it_ , ignore it etc.  
> Feel totally free to contact me here or on [my tumblr](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com)!


	4. Chapter 4

 

The soft sound of rustling pulls Clarke away from her slumber, sleep becoming deeper way faster than it was once, now that she's permitted lesser hours of rest. Paradoxically, just as sleep gets deeper, her senses get sharper, taking only a minimum amount of stimuli to set her on alert. Therefore Clarke can't be absolutely sure that what's happening to the ropes around her wrists is something she's not supposed to be conscious about.

Wouldn't be the first time that sleep deprivation plays with her mind, confusing the meaning and order of events, making her doubt herself. No, she's positive there's no effort put into being as noiseless as possible. If she were to translate the occasional pulls at her ropes into rational words, Clarke would say that whatever is happening behind her, is happening fast. Like in a hurry.

She keeps her eyes closed, though, in a pretty desperate attempt at avoiding a possible, meaningless punishment. One of those she receives lately out of the blue, when everything is going well, when she's being a good girl and following orders like she's meant to. The first one had happened right after Hotstuff#1 had taken over her training, four days prior; despite her will to be discrete, it was way too obvious to Murphy just how happy she was with the new trainer.

He had kicked one leg of the chair and had silently watched as her head and left shoulder hit the floor with a loud thud. Clarke hadn't even breathed a whimper, knowing better than giving him something he hadn't explicitly asked from her. When their eyes had locked, Murphy had simply explained, “Just so you remember that you still have another Master.” and Clarke's juicy mental retort about his jealousy had drowned under the weight of that new word, _Master_ , ringing inside her skull like a distant echo. Murphy never made mistakes. That was the moment he had decided to be clear with her on that matter, and she had known that the only possible response was “Yes, Master."

The same sweet whisper had escaped her lips after a double ration provided by the insanely sweet mouth of Hotstuff#1. No, not because Hotstuff had pushed the now delicious morsel of chicken into her mouth with his tongue, his thumb and bent index gripping lightly her chin to keep her head at the right angle, but because Murphy had slapped her immediately after, making her spit out the meat. “Sometimes your Master wants to see you fail.” He had drawled, and Clarke had looked at his feet, mentally counting all the times he had reacted to her since Hotstuff#1 had been added to the party. Clarke was having fun thinking that it was jealousy, but most probably their power dynamic was being fucked up by her making heart-eyes at her supposed savior.

“I know you're awake,” Hotstuff's deep voice caresses the hair on her nape, warming the naked skin underneath, “you're a bad liar.” There's a smile behind his words, and Clarke feels it like a blanket on her shoulders. He has a way of making her feel like everything will be good as long as he's with her, which is completely irrational and against all evidence, since she has been slapped and kicked and tortured right in front of him. But still, every time his eyes are on hers Clarke feels just how much he wants to protect her. How genuine and deep his will to save her is. How far he's willing to go to help her.

The ropes slip down from her wrists and meet the floor in a soundless thump. Clarke stays motionless as Hotstuff massages her damaged skin, slowly pushing both her arms toward her front. She's been held captive longer than she'd thought, the motion hurts like hell. With a grunt Clarke forces her shoulders to rotate, assuming once again the normal position. She looks down at her wrists, bruised and bloodied by the vicious grip of her imprisonment. Murphy had started tying them tighter than in the beginning, and Clarke has no idea what that means, but she registers the news nonetheless.

Hotstuff comes before her and kneels down, careful with the slowness of his movements as if he didn't want to scare her. His eyes search for hers and he smiles reassuringly. Clarke frowns a little, confused by what they will do today, now that it's clear it's not meal time. Again the rustling sound, and her ankles are being freed too.

“You can ask me.” Hotstuff prompts, lightly touching the violet skin tattooed by the ropes.

Clarke waits several seconds before breathing in and giving voice to her question. “Why are you freeing me?” There's an edge in her tone, a clipped falsetto of pure anxiousness, suggesting to her brain that she's not needed anymore and she's going to be disposed of. The same anxiousness that too often makes her wonder why her mother is taking all this time. 

Hotstuff exhales, pursing his lips, and lays both his hands on her knees, the warmth of his palms an inferno in contrast with the steel cold of her naked skin. It makes her burst in goosebumps, and his thumbs caress the rough surface soothingly before answering, “We need to start another part of the training, and I've convinced my partner that you were tamed enough to be kept without ropes. Thought that you would welcome the change.”

He stands up and offers his hands to steady her once Clarke takes courage and follows him. It's the first time in too many days that she's allowed to stand straight, her sore muscles screaming in protest and making her face morph into a mask of pain.

“I know, I know.” He soothes, grabbing her elbows to prevent her knees from deserting her.

Clarke looks up at him and once again has to gulp down her surprise, noticing how focused he is on her face and how incredibly oblivious he seems to be to her body. They've spent at least ten meals with their lips joined, the slowness in his movements deceiving Clarke that he was either trying to help her not to spill anything, or openly enjoying it, and yet there has never been a single hint that he is attracted to her.   
  
As her limbs get used to the weight of her body--she doesn’t fail to notice how much weight she has lost--and stop trembling, Clarke takes her time basking in their closeness, the warmth of his body relaxing her muscles and quickening her heartbeat. If only he felt the same things she was feeling, she'd be already out of here. With her bottom lip pulled lightly by her teeth, Clarke sighs, pushing her hard nipples closer to his chest.

Hotstuff doesn't even blink an eye, apparently unbothered by her vicinity and extremely evident availability. “This is your new rule,” he starts, tightening his hold on her elbows to stress the point, “whenever my partner or I come in, you are to kneel down with your arms crossed on your back and eyes set to the floor. You can't move until we say otherwise, is that clear?”

Clarke nods, trying not to show any sign of distress. Her training is going on without obstacles and still she hasn't made her kidnappers fall. She isn't close to understanding their dynamic either, with Murphy and Hotstuff constantly switching places, not talking about anything that happens in the room with her to each other, and then repeating the same sentences as if they've studied a script. The only thing she can do is follow their lead, trying to gain as much information as possible in the meantime.   
  
“Try, please. I can correct your posture before my partner comes in and punishes you for doing it wrong.” He pleads, his eyebrows doing that thing where looking at him is like looking at his heart breaking, and Clarke finds herself succumbing to gravity, his face getting farther and harder to look at until her knees touch the cold floor. He’s still gripping her elbows, leaving her with her arms raised and her head angled in a painful way.   
  
Clarke wants to assume her position so she can avoid making Murphy dissatisfied--it’s never a good thing--but Hotstuff has no intention of letting her do that, apparently. When confusion wins over she glances up at him. It’s in that moment that she realizes his grip on her arms is stronger than it should be, right when his eyes drink all the dark in the room and become two bottomless wells; his nostrils dilate in time with his quick paced breathing, the tip of his tongue brushing the middle of his bottom lip. She’s at the perfect height and can’t stop herself, she looks at the hard bulge in his crotch.   
  
Swallowing through her suddenly very tight throat, Clarke manages to whisper a “Please?”, which succeeds in making him let go of her arms. Moving in a fluid but consciously slow motion, Clarke crosses her arms behind her back, pushing out her breasts and widening ever so slightly her legs. She’s a sight, she knows that now that Hotstuff is finally responding to her. In the time they spend in silence, with him staring down at her as if this was the first time he was really seeing her as a woman, Clarke tries to understand what has made him react like this and comes up short. It’s not the first time they’ve engaged in intimate activities due to the beautiful meal routine, how is it possible that he’s just now starting to feel attraction?  
  
Even without answers, Clarke can’t help but feel proud of her new accomplishment, the first in days. Still in doubt whether she should trust him or not, having Hotstuff wrapped around her little finger is the only way she can promise herself protection. If getting her on her knees is what works for him, Clarke will work with that without a second thought.   
  
Hotstuff seems to snap out of whatever trance he was in and clears his throat, kneeling down in front of her and pulling her into his arms in a rush. It happens so fast that Clarke has no time to register what’s happening until she’s being squeezed against his broad chest, his cheek pressed against the hair behind her ear. With her arms still in perfect position behind her back, Clarke hears him breathing her in. His strong forearms cover the binding she was already making with her own hands, therefore leaving her no choice but to stay there, counting the seconds ticking by in her mind, trying desperately to ignore the way the rough fabric of his black cotton shirt feels against her skin.   
  
She closes her eyes, deciding to enjoy the human contact for as long as it lasts. Hotstuff exhales, his hot breath rolling down her shoulder and making her wish that he could just swallow her whole. The guy knows how to hug, she amuses herself thinking.    
  
“I can’t stand what’s happening to you,” he croaks out, sounding as if he was close to tears and surprising the hell out of Clarke in the process, “I’m losing my mind seeing you like this, I promised your father that I’d protect you as if you were my own daughter, godfuckingdammit!”  
  
The bear-hug gets even tighter and Clarke officially takes it personally. She’s about to ask him if he always gets boners with girls he considers his daughters, but in that moment he releases her and takes her face in his hands, forcing her to look at his damp eyes. Was he really tearing up?   
  
“I swear on my life, I’ll take you out of here. Just try to be as compliant as possible, don’t make my partner hurt you. Let him believe that you’ve broken down and are becoming the slave he wants. The closer he thinks we are to the deadline, the better. I have a plan.”   
  
As if his emotional speech wasn’t enough, he ends his scene with a kiss on her forehead before standing up and fleeing the room, leaving Clarke on the floor with the uncomfortable feeling of having chosen to seduce the only guy who wants to substitute her dad. She tries to tell herself that as long as he helps her escape this fucking cell, she can also call him “Daddy”, but somewhere in her chest there’s a painful pang that whispers in her ears that she should stop deluding herself and try to have him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited by [Zoadgo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo), as usual. This account wouldn't even exist if it weren't for her, I can't thank her enough for putting up with me these past 8 months <3
> 
> Thanks to anyone who will read it, comment it, _kudos it_ , ignore it etc.  
> Feel totally free to contact me here or on [my tumblr!](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter 5

 

When the metallic lock clicks and announces the arrival of one or both of her friends, Clarke is already down, ready in her new position. Aligned with the door, her perfect posture will be the first thing they will see of the room; knees slightly apart, arms folded behind her back, her head slightly bent forward, the line of her back arched just enough to push her generous breasts out from the shadow of her face.

Clarke has spent the whole night looking for the best position that would save her from having cramps after ten minutes of posing, and she's not yet sure of having solved the problem. Not that she is really regretting the time spent reflecting on the latest developments of her captivity--a poor victim like her definitely needs to take stock of the situation--, if not for the annoying detail that at the arrival of his companions, Clarke still hasn’t formed a plan.

The door opens to the inside of the room, revealing Murphy’s blacks boots, the only detail that can be seen in the periphery of her vision. As he walks forward and closes the door behind him, Clarke realizes that she would have been able to recognize him from the simple rhythm of his steps. It only puts her on alert; she’s spending too much time in here.

Murphy walks slowly around her, as if he were studying her from every angle.

“Not bad,” he says, “but you still have work to do.”

“Yes, Master,” slips easily from Clarke’s lips, as a chant memorized in school. It sounds as easy as all the “Yes”s Clarke has said whenever her mother reassured her that she would no longer be in danger, that it was the last time something so horrible would happen. It sounds even easier than all the “Please I want to go home”s implored to the countless kidnappers, as if the days spent with them didn’t have so much more flavor than the most intimate Christmas dinners with the surrogate family that her mother has imposed on her over the years.

Clarke rotates her shoulders, shaking away the memories. The present this time is more worrisome than the others, but if someone were to ask her if she’d rather be at home, Clarke still wouldn’t know what to say. At the moment home wins only because she’d have flowing water and some kind of variety in her diet.   
  
Murphy leans two fingers on her head and pushes it forward, forcing her to stare at her reddened knees. After one night of exercise she's already starting to show bruises.

"You've become more docile since the rookie has been added to the picture," Murphy starts, his voice resonating somewhere behind Clarke, "What did he do to tame you so well?"

Clarke swallows, forcing herself not to take the bait Murphy is throwing. What did Hotstuff do differently? He didn't beat her up just for the sake of it, just to start.

"He kisses you softly while he gives you food?"

He said he wanted to protect her and has actively tried to do so.

"He made you come once and has promised you more orgasms if you're a good girl?"  
  
He has given her comfort when she couldn't dare to hope for even the slightest recognition of human dignity.

"Or maybe it's simply because you like him more? In the end you're still a little girl, how little does it take to convince you that the prince charming exists?"

Clarke breathes deeply, biting the inside of her cheek to vent somewhere within herself the wave of anger that Murphy is mounting against her. Why he's doing it can have several answers, and not falling into his trap is surely the only acceptable response, but God only knows how close Clarke is to laying her hands on him.

"You're getting pissed off, I see it," Murphy smiles, as if the mere tension in Clarke's shoulders were exactly what he was hoping to get. Clarke still doesn’t respond, but meets Murphy's eyes with defiance. She won't open her mouth, but she won't let him believe he has won either.

"With rookie you don’t get angry because he lets you suck his cock? Hm? Is that it?"  
  
Clarke 's lips contract in another effort of self-control. She has to concede it to Murphy, he's smart. It took him less time than expected to understand the button that would make her the most furious.

"Do you think he has a crush on you? That he jacks off thinking of you, all emaciated and malnourished in this cell? That he gets a hard on thinking of ramming it inside you, knowing that you would be already soaked for him?"

Now even her skin vibrates under the current that runs whenever Murphy opens his mouth. Her days were pretty hellish without this asshole coming to provoke her openly, without any reason. Clarke consoles herself thinking that if Hotstuff is telling the truth, he already has a plan in mind to get her out of here. And when that happens, Murphy and his boss and all involved will only have to run away and pray that Clarke won't find them.

"Let me tell you a couple things, just because you look like a smart girl and I'd hate to see you lobotomized by that idiot: there are other cells besides this one, and when he’s not here to pamper you, he's in other rooms with other little scared girls. "

He smiles again, as if to soften what he believes must have been a well-aimed blow. Clarke would laugh in his face, if she weren't so busy stopping herself from closing her hands around his neck. Who the hell does he think he is? What convinced him that she’s in love with Hotstuff?  
  
Clarke goes back to what Hotstuff has told her to do to keep Murphy quiet, make him believe that she was becoming the slave he was trying to make, but as it turns out, her own condescension has convinced Murphy that she has a crush on his partner and she's trying to please him.  
  
She also had to keep a low profile to allow Hotstuff to act undisturbed, but apparently he had miscalculated. Murphy has not only completely misunderstood her renewed docility, but doesn’t even seem satisfied with the her training. Has she just won a prolonged imprisonment without meaning to? If Hotstuff really counted his moves wrong, she may have ended up in even deeper shit than before .

Almost as if he had been just evoked, the cell door opens again and Hotstuff’s familiar figure appears as a black shadow behind Murphy’s head. Clarke doesn’t dare look away, for fear of confirming some kind of distorted fantasy, if she allows herself to look at Hotstuff.

"Everything ok?" Hotstuff asks with a hint of curiosity in his voice, perhaps surprised by finding Murphy with her, unlike the last times. Hotstuff walks over and reaches the table behind them, where Clarke hears the clattering of the tray being placed on the surface of the wood. It’s meal time, it will be fun if Murphy doesn’t go away.

"Sure," Murphy says, "I was just saying to our little girl how good she was."

"And good girls get food," Hotstuff approaches her and Clarke manages to relax the muscles of her shoulders enough to sigh. He kneels at her right, allowing Clarke to stop staring at Murphy and look at a far more likable face. She gives him a faint smile, in case he was wondering if she was okay.

Hotstuff smiles back, his eyes losing any warmth inside them when he acknowledges Murphy. Clarke has the sudden realization that she’s the toy they are fighting over. She has just the time to wonder if this happens with the other abducted girls too--assuming that Murphy has told her the truth--before Hotstuff slips a piece of chicken in his mouth and lays his hand on her neck to push her toward him.

Clarke closes her eyes in preparation, but Murphy puts his hand on her head and stops her. "No. Today we add a new rule."

Hotstuff looks up, not bothering to hide his perplexity. He slowly chews on the morsel in his mouth, accepting Murphy’s takeover, though clearly not happy about it. Clarke doesn’t have the faintest idea of what she will be forced to do, and when Murphy disappears behind her back to retrieve the pot of chicken soup, she feels again that tingling in her palms typical of when she's nervous. She swallows and her heart blocks the saliva in her throat. She just hopes that whatever Murphy will make her do won’t lead to her punishment for not respecting the new rule before it was established.

Murphy goes back to her left and pushes his hand before her mouth, the piece of chicken innocently laying on his palm as a magnanimous offer to a stray dog. "From now on you’ll eat like animals do, from the hand of their Master or from the floor." He says solemnly, and Clarke’s stomach makes a gurgling sound of disgust.

The hand in front of her gets closer to her mouth and she opens her lips, cursing in her mind Murphy and all the shit she’s had to swim through, since this nightmare has begun.

"No darling, you must come and get it yourself." Murphy says, lowering his hand up to her chin. Clarke gives him a look, hoping to communicate at least half of the hate she feels, and comes forward, grabbing the piece on his hand with her teeth and putting it in her mouth.

She knows that Hotstuff is watching, but she doesn’t dare to turn toward him while eating what she now knows as the taste of humiliation. Clarke tries to convince herself that she has done worse things without losing her dignity, but is forced to admit that Murphy’s digs didn’t miss the target completely; probably because he was not far from the truth when he spoke of her having a crush on his partner in crime.

Looking down at her knees, Clarke reflects on the fact that she has quietly let herself surrender to her feelings for the only man who has promised her protection. She had tried to tell herself not to believe him, and instead had let her cynicism cover what her ingenuity was already slipping into her veins.  
  
Clarke chews and saliva goes sour around that nucleus of shame that her molars cannot crush. What can she do now, beside hoping that her _Daddy_ will keep his word? What moves has she left up her sleeve, now that Hotstuff confessed his promise to her father, and Murphy is convinced that she’s drinking her brain away because of stupid and girly crushes?

Once she swallows, Clarke looks up at Murphy, who instead is staring at Hotstuff over her head. It’s a strange thing, because Clarke never saw Murphy assume an expression so serious and thoughtful, as if suddenly he had taken off the kidnapper mask he had worn until now, and was addressing him as himself. If it were so, it would mean that between the two of them there’s bad blood well beyond the terms of their work.

Murphy clicks his tongue, raising back in an instant all his barriers. He wipes his hand against his pants and mumbles to Clarke, "I liked you better when you were fighting," before he peeks at Hotstuff and then leaves.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Zoadgo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo), for editing it, as usual. I should start paying you, I guess.
> 
> And obviously thanks to anyone who will read it, comment it, _kudos it_ , ignore it etc.  
> Feel totally free to contact me here or on [my tumblr](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com)!


	6. Chapter 6

 

Dignity is a rather strange concept. It is a value that others impose on you, a level you have to reach to be considered worthy of respect, and at the same time it is a standard that you impose on yourself, based on the image you have of the person you want to be. In all these cases it is always an objectifying look what is needed. You have to put yourself before someone else’s eyes and let them judge you as if you were an object in a shop window.

At first you don’t think about it, they are just passersby parading next to you that you will forget in the fraction of a second; you don’t even register most of these people consciously, they are movements in your field of vision. Yet you still consider them human. The look that barely cares to touch them implies that there is nothing wrong or noteworthy about them. You pass them by and go on. So days are made of hundreds and hundreds of small confirmations, of strangers who go on with their lives but, by touching yours, give you a sense of humanity. You are a person of no importance in their visual field, just like they are in yours. You are a person.  
  
When this silent exchange is suddenly removed, Clarke takes it for granted for a while. She was a person yesterday, she'll certainly still be a person today.

As long as she can look at herself from the tits down, she can still check on her body and tell herself that she’s still there. She doesn’t know what state she’s in from the head to the shoulders, but the rest is not so bad. She’s seen worse winters.

Then they blindfold her, and Clarke no longer has contact with reality. She lies still on the floor for hours and centuries, and all the noises she hears are in her head. She may be inventing them. The voices that once conversed with her, now become sterile instructions, simple findings of fact; "Food", "Drink", "Mine." The food makes a wet thud when it falls to the ground, and Clarke has to bend down and sniff around until she finds it. The water is poured carelessly now on her nose, now on her cheek, and she has to open her mouth toward the ceiling and move until the water falls in her throat.

The worst thing becomes finding the bucket in which to do her business. When she was free to move, it was always left in the right corner of the cell. As long as she didn’t dare stand up without permission, and remembered to reach it crawling, it wouldn’t have been taken from her for a full cycle of food and sleep. After the world falls into darkness, finding the fucking bucket becomes a game. Crawling becomes a necessity, if Clarke doesn’t want to risk accidentally spilling it with a kick.

Murphy comments flatly that it's too easy when you have the stink to chase. Clarke has to apologize for being good at finding her shit. The following three sleep cycles are a single movie in which she cuts every single muscle fiber of his neck, one by one. Clarke can’t see his face, but the complete darkness makes her more receptive to the other sensory stimuli around her, and she realizes that Murphy has been more pissed than usual ever since the blindfold thing has begun. What's there to rave about when all Clarke’s possible errors are caused by impediments imposed by him, she doesn’t know, but she still tries to remain as docile as possible.

When the newness of her condition wears off, Clarke begins to feel the panic and claustrophobia. Now that she no longer sees the walls of her cell, she instinctively imagines them constantly placed an inch from her face. The room has become a cabin, and every inch that Clarke walks in any direction increases her anxiety of really facing the limit of her space. She convinces herself to remain motionless except for the times when she needs to find and use the bucket. Eventually she tries to postpone that, too.

During these times her heroic savior shows up very little, and when he’s present he’s always with Murphy, just a voice added to the cacophony of orders and requests. It becomes a strange solace, hearing the voices distant from her, for the simple reason that it weakens the choking hold around her neck, confirming that there is space between her body and the walls of hell.

"Don’t run."

Hotstuff’s voice makes her conscience plummet behind her eyes, and Clarke can almost hear its crash against the inside of her body. For a second shock freezes her again, cutting off her breath and rattling her veins in a giant motion of disgust. She opens her mouth to push out some kind of pleading, but it remains unarticulated behind her tongue, as her eyes remain planted on her own reflection.

Award for spending fourteen cycles of sleep and food without knocking off her john: a mirror. It’s big enough that she can look at the state of her whole body while she’s down on the floor. Hotstuff keeps it slightly inclined forward by holding the upper side with both hands.

Clarke knows that her brain has been registering her reflection in the mirror for several minutes, but the more she looks at it the more she feels like the neuronal pathways behind her eyes are lost before they can reach their destination. She’s looking but she’s not seeing anything, there’s a white noise swirling in her ears, and the image reflected before her has no meaning. It’s a logical error.  
  
“Clarke.”   
  
Clarke raises her gaze for a moment, hoping to read in Hotstuff’s expression an answer that will make sense of what is happening. His face is devoid of any emotion, but if she focuses on his eyes she can sense a fire storm behind them, as if he were holding back a sea of lava under his skin. Why is she so sensitive with him but can’t feel nothing when her eyes move back to the mirror?  
  
_Who is that thing?_    
  
The hair is dirty and greasy with sebum, the original blonde drenched in dirt till it became ash and light brown. The old curls now are wires crushed against her scalp. The face shows eyes dug into two purple holes. Their gaze is tormented by ghosts and nightmares, the cerulean iris cooled enough that it looks like ice, to match with the pallor of the skin. Hollow cheeks, prominent cheekbones, lips cracked and broken in several places, heavy breasts on a ribcage all too visible. Bruised ribs, and emaciated legs covered with hairs - the last weeks have said goodbye to the work of her beautician. Long nails black with dirt on gaunt hands, on feet shrunken by cramps.  
  
_Trash, garbage, monster._  
  
“Clarke.”   
  
Clarke looks up and her throat hurts. Moving the muscles to swallow, a knot prevents her from doing it. A puff comes natural, but it turns into a sob before she realizes it, and it escapes from her lips without a reason. Hotstuff stares at her almost without blinking, and Clarke feels sorry for him because he has to look at her.   
  
Her savior, the charming spy, the silent ninja, the kind kidnapper that gives her chicken pieces with his tongue. The person that she was convinced she could seduce to her advantage, without thinking about what imprisonment would be doing to her. The wave of pain and self-hatred is so violent that Clarke finds it hard to breathe out of her lump of torment. She looks down to go back at the mirror. She has lost everything. Such ugly things shouldn’t even think about sex, let alone love.  
  
"I think ..." Clarke begins, before clearing her throat, "I think I'm broken."  
  
It’s a simple statement, before the evidence of facts. That thing in the mirror has nothing to do with what Clarke has in her head, there is no correspondence between body and mind, and that is a foreign object. She is a foreign object. She should tear off her skin and leave what does not belong to her.  
  
Clarke feels Hotstuff sigh, but she doesn’t have the strength to look at him. With that face she has smiled at him, with those lips she has sought comfort in his mouth, with those hollow bruises she has chased his eyes to read him like a book.  
  
A tiny and insignificant voice begins to chant to stop staring at the mirror, before it's too late. Before she loses hope and humanity. Before lie becomes truth and Clarke loses her last anchor to reality.  
  
"I am broken," she repeats with mild astonishment, finally breaking away from the mirror and looking at her knees marked by weeks of cement against her kneecaps. A background noise suggests to Clarke that Hotstuff is moving the mirror, probably resting it against the wall behind him.  
  
"What do you mean?" He asks, walking slowly along the distance between them, and stopping right in front of her. He towers over her and covers the light from the ceiling, Clarke wonders if she could fit under his shoe.  
  
“What I said,” she answers, focusing on his neatly tied shoelaces, “I think I’m finally broken. If my mother doesn’t hurry, or you don’t take me out of here, I’ll be lost.”  
  
“Soon, I promise,” he says, managing to make some of that passion Clarke has seen behind his eyes ride the tide of his voice.  
  
She nods, without really believing him. She thought she was resisting, that she had everything under control, but her body was already tumbling down while her mind was busy building sand castles.  
  
Hotstuff kneels in front of her and warily reaches out with his hand toward Clarke’s, lying next to her foot. As soon as his index brushes her little finger, a shot runs through her arm, sending her heart into overdrive. It’s been so long since the last time he has touched her, her skin has forgotten what it feels like. She has no right to feel like this, who does she think she is? Clarke stares down at their hands, so surprisingly close, and exhales, feeling a bit of that anxiety that was trapping her body leaving her, despite herself.

After a few seconds, Hotstuff’s hand moves another imperceptible inch, bringing his finger to caress Clarke’s pinkie. It feels like comfort and heartbreak, and Clarke has the tragic pull to turn away even though her mental sanity is at stake, because a part of her knows that this is a breaking point, and accepting his touch means letting him into an open wound.

Clarke hears him breathe deeply, and his fingers twitch against hers. “I need you to resist just a little bit more, ok? We’ll receive a new shipment in a couple of days, and we’ll take advantage of that distraction to make you get out of here.” Clarke’s eyebrows shot upward, and he smiles sadly, “I know what he has told you to push you against me. But Clarke,” he pauses to swallow, and he moves his hand over hers, “the only reason I’m here is for you.”  
  
Her heart hammers in her chest, under the insistent gaze of her knight in wolf clothes, and for the first time Clarke gives herself a moment to think about the other girls locked down just like her. When Murphy had mentioned them she had been too pissed off to care, and then darkness had kept her busy enough that she couldn’t think about anything else. Now she can focus on other cells identical to hers, on other girls kneeling down or tied to their chair, on their rituals and orders, on tons of other boring chicken soups.   
  
“Maybe we should--”  
  
“I don’t give a shit about them. You’re my job.”  
  
Clarke stays with her mouth open, undecided whether to give voice to the dozens of questions swirling in her head. Knowing that Hotstuff is perfectly ok with abandoning dozens of other victims and focusing only on her, petrifies and reassures her at the same time. She doesn’t know how many things he has been forced to do for this undercover job, but he didn’t forget himself, and more importantly, he hasn’t forgotten her.  
  
His hand is still on hers, the warmth of his skin like a blanket on her shoulders, like the promise of safety in the middle of hell, the kind hand offering something she’s not sure she can receive anymore, but that once upon a time had meant everything.   
  
“Two days,” Clarke mumbles absentmindedly, turning towards the closed door of her cell. Hotstuff’s fingers slowly brushes hers when he removes his hand, and Clarke sighs as her eyelids flutter close. Then he stands up, makes the gesture of cleaning the dust off his black jeans, and walks towards the exit. He stops right before knocking to make Murphy open the door from the outside.   
  
“Just be a good girl, and start counting.”

Whatever. She’s not sure it matters anymore.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [Zoadgo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo), for editing it. None of this would be possible without you *w* 
> 
> And obviously thanks to anyone who will read it, comment it, _kudos it_ , ignore it etc.  
> Feel totally free to contact me here or on [my tumblr](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com)!


	7. Chapter 7

  
Clarke is not sure when it happens, but it's certainly not two days later.

She is kneeling in her position, waiting for visits or sleepiness, counting the breaks between cramps at her toes and the pins and needles in her calves to pass the time without engaging her brain in useless thoughts. A pang in her ankle, and Clarke forgets the monotony of the day; a lit nerve under the sole of her foot, and the humiliation of seeing herself in the mirror hides in a remote part of her consciousness. There is no hunger or thirst that wins over the desire to bury herself. They should leave her to rot until a pile of clean and smooth bones is the only thing left of her.

After all, getting out of here now has become an empty hope, and even Hotstuff's reassurances are not enough to keep her from slipping into a world of silence and cotton; he is part of that great lie that she was telling herself when she believed she had some power over him.

And in the end that much had been enough to make her plummet into her smallness, in her incomplete adolescence, in her never lived childhood. When no one listens to you, attracting their gaze becomes the only way to still get the attention that you so desire, and for Clarke her own body has always been a weapon. Now she knows how double edged it is.

It's twenty-five breaths after a cramp in her right foot, that the door gets opened wide, and hurried footsteps approach her. Instinctively, Clarke retracts, mistaking the blast of air from the body now in front of her for a hit that doesn't come. Cold fingers touch her temples, removing the blindfold she had promised her soul to, rather than having to look even one more time at the mirror.

Her eyes take several seconds to focus and get used to the violent light, but Clarke is now so accustomed to blindness that she recognizes Hotstuff by the timbre of his breath. It is not his face that comes as a surprise, but his bruised cheekbone and the bleeding cut on his cheek. The instinct to raise her hands to check that his injuries are not serious dominates her curiosity to know why he is in that state in the first place, so even before opening her mouth, her index finger leans gently on the thin skin of his temple, intent on inspecting the damage.

Hotstuff blocks her wrist with his hand, and meets her eyes from below to pore over her. Clarke hadn't even realized how much lower than her line of sight he had moved. The urgency in his eyes sends a shock of adrenaline through her veins, and the tingling that takes possession of her arms is a feeling so vivid compared to the nothing of the last era spent in the dark, that she feels her head spinning and she has to lower her gaze. Only then she notes on the floor behind him an open black gym bag, the content of which she cannot see from her position, and beside it, two white sneakers.

"Can you walk?" Hotstuff asks, tightening his grip on her wrist to get her attention.  
  
Clarke's brain takes off slowly, but finally it begins to connect the dots: something new is happening. No chicken soup this time. Nodding, Clarke purses her lips to the accelerating beating of her heart. There aren't many explanations for the evidence in front of her that doesn't include the word "escape", but Clarke still finds it hard to consider the idea. Hope is one of the most devastating things that you can own, and she has learned to dispense it with an eyedropper.

Hotstuff loosens the shoelaces, as she moves to the side to remove her weight from her ankles, and it's only with extreme fatigue that she manages to move them forward enough to allow Hotstuff to put the shoes on her. Thousands of needles prick her skin as her calves and feet gain sensitivity again, and the feeling of her veins suddenly subjected to the full extent of her bloodstream is so painful that her breath gets snatched from her lungs.

Hotstuff doesn't notice it and closes the zipper of the bag with a sharp gesture, then gets up and drags her along with him from the hold he still has on her. Clarke whines and clings with the other arm on his shoulder, commanding her legs to straighten. It seems like she succeeds, once her legs are stretched they have the necessary rigidity to keep her standing, but as soon as she tries to take a step forward, the right knee liquefies and Clarke falls under the pull of gravity with a gasp.

"Hey!" Hotstuff encircles her back just before she finds herself back on the floor. He curses under his breath, adjusts the bag better on his shoulder, and shifts his hold from her wrist to under her knees, taking the floor away from under her feet.

Clarke hangs on for dear life as Hotstuff carries her outside of the cell. She still can't believe it's actually happening, and her arms cling to him a little harder, not wanting it to be just one of her cruel dreams where she's sure she's safe and sound, only to wake up again with her knees black with bruises. Even as a dream, this looks pretty unusual; she would have never imagined the corridor empty. It's also shorter than the one in her dreams, with only three other closed doors on the same side of her cell, before a turn on the right blocks her view.

"There's no one..." she starts, not sure if the comment will mean anything to Hotstuff.

He grunts as he strides farther and farther from the nightmare she was getting used to calling home. "I know, I already took care of that," he answers breathily, and after a quick look at his face Clarke decides not to make him waste any more air, settling for hiding in the crook of his neck and waiting for the open air.   
  
There are only two turns before the sound of a metal door being curt-kicked; then the cold. Clarke's mind short-circuits the exact moment fresh air touches her naked body, and her skin explodes in chills and goosebumps. She doesn't have the courage to raise her head from the hiding place kindly offered by Hotstuff's chest, but Clarke holds onto him harder, trying to record the feeling of the cold air on her without dying. She hadn't realized how much her captivity had muffled her senses with a slow and continuous litany of bland food and warm and rotten smells.

Here is the world. Here is the real world. Here is the sound of Hotstuff's shoes on the asphalt, and Clarke hadn't believed she would ever see the day when the simple cobblestones struck by a hard rubber sole would reduce her to the verge of sobbing. She breathes in and raises her head, suddenly starved of natural light and open spaces, but she has just the time to see the bluish color before sunrise or after sunset, that Hotstuff pushes her into the open door of a minivan, and closes it behind them.

"Go, go!!!" Hotstuff shouts to the driver on the other side of a wooden panel with a badly cut slit where the space between the two front seats should be. The van starts with a screech, crushing Clarke against her back. The window to the left is a black rectangle. A piece of glossy film, detached from the glass, points invitingly at her, and Clarke doesn't hesitate before attacking it with nails consumed by her own teeth.  
  
"Clarke," Hotstuff's voice carries an intonation that should worry her, but Clarke is too busy catching that little, damned shiny little piece that is preventing her from seeing the horizon. Or any space larger than a fucking shower stall.

" _Clarke_ ," he's closer now, and his timbre has more weight, just like when he was about to say that he would punish her to keep Murphy on their good side, or when he tried to gain her attention every time she slipped away in some strange parallel universe in which she was not being buried alive and she was not listening to every clod weighing down the lid of the tiny coffin in which she had been locked in without even a shitty candle that would just consume what little oxygen she had but at least she would be able to see that those fucking walls were four inches from her instead of right on top of her against her throat and over her lungs and pressed against her face breaking her bones and-

"Clarke!" Hotstuff grabs her wrists, forcing her to turn toward him, and he would have hurt her less if he had actually closed his fingers around her neck.

A desperate whine comes out of Clarke, one that should sound like a "let go" and "let me out", and "help me", and "I'm dying and I don't know why," but Hotstuff seems to know what is happening, because he kneels in the limited space between their seats and the panel in front of them, and takes a deep breath. "Listen to me, you're having a panic attack, you are screwing your body by breathing so fast. Now do as I say, and I promise you it will end within a few minutes, okay?"  
  
Clarke doesn't reply, realizing only in that moment how quickly her chest is rising and falling, how her heart seems to tighten in pain with every exhalation, starved of air that doesn't seem to ever be enough.

Hotstuff measures three fingers from the end of her left palm, and then surrounds that point of her forearm with a grip that on other occasions would have set her on alarm, because that kind of strength meant she had done something really wrong. But strangely enough, the grip against the skin is distracting, and Clarke regains a minimum of lucidity to realize that she should let him help her if she doesn't want to lose consciousness in a van heading who-knows-where.

"Where ..." Clarke manages to gasp, and even if talking is an effort her body still cannot bear, she forces herself to go on, "...are we going?"

"Someplace safe," Hostuff says, taking her other hand and lacing his fingers with hers. "Now I want you to copy my breath, and every time you feel like choking, grip my hand as hard as you can and hold on. Got it?"

Clarke knows the routine for panic attacks, and a motion of irritation rises to her throat at the condescending and sappy tone Hotstuff is using. It's not the first time that happens, now that she has taken control of her brain she knows how to force her body to follow. But despite everything, Clarke doesn't let go of Hotstuff's hand, in a masochistic desire to console herself because she can't see the light of the sun or the moon yet, and she has gone from a room to an even smaller space before she could convince herself that things were really changing for the better.  
  
So Clarke pretends to follow his lead, sharing the same rhythm of breath with him, clutching his hand for all the wrong reasons in this world, and Hotstuff remains focused on her, his eyes always intent on catching her slightest change. After a few minutes she can no longer pretend to find following him difficult, and he moves to sit beside her. Clarke loosens the grip of her fingers, but Hotstuff doesn't let his slip away, still holding her hand with enough force to make her notice that he hasn't stopped paying attention to it.

"What happened to your face?" Clarke asks while staring at their joined hands, resting on his leg.

"I didn't want my partner to suspect my absence during the arrival of the cargo, so I made up a fight with him and left."

"That cargo," Clarke swallows with difficulty, "how many people?"

"I honestly don't know. But Clarke, do not think even for a second to take responsibility for them. This kind of business is complex, and there are too many people involved. To make a person escape is hard enough, getting rid of a whole load would draw the attention of the upper levels, and that amounts to suicide."

Hotstuff's cold logic collides with the feeling of pressure that Clarke feels in the pit of her stomach, but deep down she knows that he is right; she can already consider herself lucky as hell, taking responsibility for others is useless unless you have the power to actually do something. And this is definitely not her case. The feeling of pressure increases to a burn, and Clarke frowns. "But it's not just me, won't they get even more suspicious, seeing that you're gone too?"  
  
Hotstuff stays silent, and the truck stops. "We're here," he says with a slight puff of fatigue as he moves further to the right, leaving her hand, and opens the sliding door. Only two elements capture Clarke's attention: the light against the asphalt has become even clearer, now that they are closer to the sunrise; the door of the van shows a glimpse of a house with a large white facade, and at the sides of its door stand two thugs dressed in full bouncers outfit, and a man slightly shorter than them, his gaze fixed on the car. Fixed on her.

Somehow Clarke convinces herself in half a second that this is not the kind of "safe" that she would have wished for herself. While Hotstuff turns to her and holds out his hand, his smile still friendly and calm, Clarke desperately tries to find the handle of her door with her left hand. As soon as she finds it, she pulls with all her might, opening her way to escape. Idiots the lot of them, forgetting to block the alternative exits.

Clarke puts her feet on the ground, and the soles do that _thump_ against the asphalt that she was craving so much ever since Hotstuff had taken her out of the building. Not worrying about anything else but getting as far away as possible from there in the shortest amount of time, Clarke raises a knee and takes momentum with the other foot, starting the run. Everything is so fast that it takes more than necessary for her to realize that the world has moved in the wrong direction, and her face has met the asphalt.  
  
A breath later, pain shoots through her body, burning her skin already excoriated by the hard contact. Trembling with adrenaline, Clarke puts her hands on the ground and gets up enough to look behind her at what interrupted her escape; the laces of her left shoe are caught in the black mold of the sole of the other one. Untied and long, the strings lie on the ground in mocking doodles. Clarke remains still, staring at them as if they were the ones who have offended her, feeling the familiar pang of betrayal and numbness battling for dominance inside her head.   
  
Hotstuff peeps out from behind the van, calmly leaning against the vehicle with his arms folded. "You're really not that smart, huh?"  
  
That son of a bitch.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my boyfriend, for the fucking creepy idea of the untied shoes. "She'd trust me, but she'd forget to tie them, so she wouldn't be able to run away." 
> 
> Thanks again to [Zoadgo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo), for editing it. I'm so happy to be back and have you as my editor again <3 
> 
> And obviously thanks to anyone who will read it, comment it, _kudos it_ , ignore it etc.  
> Feel totally free to contact me here or on [my tumblr](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com)!


	8. Chapter 8

 

Clarke gets to look at her new Master’s face all of two seconds, enough to register the unhealthy paleness of his skin matching hers and the vertical scar cutting his lips, then he utters a disgusted, “Clean her up,” and she’s dragged by the two bouncers to the open stalls behind the house. She doesn’t put up a fight, her non-cooperation more a matter of lack of strength in her muscles than anything else. The bouncer at her right pushes her inside a stable, while the other walks away to retrieve the water hose, lying coiled up like a snake a few feet from them. A breath later a violent jet of cold water hits her bruised skin, and pain floods her bloodstream.   
  
Letting fatigue take a hold of her, Clarke’s knees hit the ground. As water flows over scabs and cobblestones, her feet drowning in the shoes, Clarke fights against her brain to make it shut down at least for one, blissful second. She’s so tired of everything. But Judas leaves five minutes after delivering her, shaking hands with Scar about a payment that will take place next week, not even sparing a glance at her; the black van has no license place, and that’s something that would attract way too much attention in the city, with the police immediately investigating after catching a vehicle they couldn’t trace, so they must be outside their jurisdiction, out in the thin line of no man’s land that separates their laws from those of the next closest city; the house is clearly a renovated farm, even though Clarke hasn’t seen nor heard any animals nearby, and it possibly requires a staff in charge of its maintenance; the bouncers don’t seem to be carrying around guns, but they have cuffs hanging from a loop in their belts, and a rectangular shape in the front pocket of their black jeans with an antenna sticking out.   
  
Clarke just wants to shut down. Stop the world from spinning, her life from rolling down this desolate hill, her mind from mechanically registering details around her to understand which buttons are to be pushed to gain the upper hand. A lesson learned more than a decade before, how can a few weeks of retraining replace it? Instead, what happens is that the two layers overlay, and whether she takes a step forward or back doesn’t matter, it will be the wrong one anyway. There’s always a struggle inside her, never a moment of peaceful silence where she’s not pressured to do something against something else. Fight against the captors, fight against the training, fight against her own hope, fight against the mirror, fight against herself so she can break down in peace. There’s always a hair sticking out from her perfectly formed plan of action, as if she just couldn’t bear to do the right thing even when she’s convinced of it. There’s always a part of her that wishes to live, always a part that wishes to die. The two halves don’t match up. And she really wants the silence right now.   
  
Once she’s clean enough, the two men take her back to the main entrance of the house, leaving her naked and dripping in the hall; she has to leave the shoes at the door, and she’s glad of getting rid of them. Clarke doesn’t lift her head, but takes in the large room from under her eyelids; it looks boringly country, all light wood and red bricks and carpets and animal heads decorating the walls. Measured steps approach her from her left, and Clarke resists the urge to look in that direction. Instead she pushes her training before all her thoughts, straightening her back and clasping her hands to the front, letting the V of her arms push up her breasts.  
  
“Look up, pet.”   
  
Clarke closes her eyes briefly, taking a breath, then looks at her left, meeting Scar’s gaze. He’s taller than her, and Clarke tilts her head to the side, letting her thin, wet hair show a glimpse of her neck. It’s what she has been taught to do, even though it is an empty gesture giving her current physical state. Scar’s hum of approval coupled with his cold gaze tells her that he’s at least happy to not have to teach her that much.   
  
He opens up in a formal smile, shifting back and forth on his feet, “Welcome to the training facility! I’m sure you’ll find your new arrangement better than your last, yeah? Now, the usual procedure would require for you to join the other fresh slaves, but your case is a little different, so you’ll follow my beautiful Raven to her quarters, let her dress you up, and then meet me for a private breakfast in my studio. Understand? Tell me you do, little one.”   
  
Clarke blinks, nodding slowly, then thinks better and answers with a soft voice, “I understand, Master.”   
  
Scar’s face gains color until he looks almost like a normal person, and Clarke feels her stomach twist in disgust at the knowledge that she has made him blush. “Oh, don’t try to flatter me, you minx! You can call me Master Cage. We’ll drop the name once you’re formally mine,” he leans in, eyeing her up, “and you’re resembling something more fuckable than a dead cat.”   
  
His statement doesn’t need an answer, so Clarke stays silent, not enjoying the flash of nostalgia for Murphy’s treatment that lays heavily on her shoulders. She’d never imagined she would come to miss the asshole, but her gut tells her that Murphy’s punishments are better than this man’s caresses. There’s no way to know right now, but Clarke really doesn’t want to find out.   
  
A naked brunette with a stunningly athletic body literally appears behind Cage, and Clarke’s eyes widen in surprise. She hadn’t heard her coming nor seen her approaching.   
  
“Master, you called for me,” the girl murmurs sweetly, her voice barely reaching Clarke’s ears.  
  
“Ah yes, Raven, I want you to take Clarke to your quarters and prepare her. She’ll have breakfast with me in my studio.”  
  
Raven’s face for a split second loses its composure and she frowns, as if she weren’t expecting Cage’s order. The brief hesitation is enough to make Cage stuck out his hand and hit Raven’s face with his knuckles. Raven’s head snaps to the side and Clarke jumps out of her skin, her heart quickly pumping adrenaline through her body, flight response ready by the time she bats her eyes.  
  
Raven’s face goes back to her meek expression effortlessly, even with her cheekbone getting darker by the second. She lowers her head and bows, voice calm and controlled as she says, “I’m deeply sorry, Master, it won’t happen again. Do you wish for me to bring the cane?”   
  
Cage puts his hands on her shoulders and pushes lightly, so she faces him again. His hands cup her cheeks, thumb brushing over the spot he hit. Raven leans into the touch. “No, love, I believe you. But I will have to punish you if you get jealous again, and you know how much I hate punishing you, hm? Tell me you won’t be jealous again.”   
  
“I won’t be jealous again, Master,” Raven promptly replies, turning her head to press a light kiss into his palm.   
  
Cage hums, the sound completely different from the cold approval he had given Clarke minutes before. Here there’s a clear undertone of lust and affection, and Raven seems to have noticed too, because she parts her lips and nibbles at the skin under his thumb.  
  
Sighing, Cage lowers his hands, stroking down her arms, “Now go and do as you’re told. I’ll see you later,” then toward Clarke, “I’ll wait for you in my studio. Be quick, I hate waiting.”   
  
With a nod, Cage heads for the staircase, followed by one of the bouncers, while the other stays quietly behind them. Raven smiles warmly, “C’mon, I’ll show you our quarters.”   
  
Unsurprisingly, the house is bigger than what it looked like on the outside. As they walk down hallways and pass by rooms, Clarke tries to draw a mental map of the place, but she has to give up when a turn should bring them back to the main entrance, and instead leads them to a small living room with a lit fireplace. Raven guides them behind the sofa, until they reach an arch opening to yet another hallway, studded with closed doors.   
  
Stopping before the third one on the right, she turns around, gazing over Clarke and straight at the bouncer behind her, “May I ask for a favor?”   
  
“Sure thing, birb. Shoot.”  
  
“Would you fetch me some arnica salve? I don’t want to make Master sad because of the bruise on my face.”   
  
Clarke hears a sigh coming from the man, “Yeah, I’ll get that for you. I’d treat you better, you know.”  
  
“Oh hush,” Raven says, laughing. She waves at him, and Clarke hears his footsteps getting farther away.   
  
Clarke can’t stop staring at Raven with what she’s clearly starting to interpret as shock. Being once again caged by walls is already making her panic, and that says something considering how she’s freely roaming around, whereas before she was forced to stay put for hours at a time. But she had tasted freedom for just a moment, and she hadn’t been able to choke down that stupid hope before it had destroyed her once again. Clarke already feels miles away from the outside world, and it’s like breathing through a pillow. The windows facing now the garden, now the stalls don’t help either.    
  
Raven opens the door and tilts her head, inviting Clarke to precede her. She doesn’t have an excuse to do otherwise, so she steps inside, looking around the bedroom. There are three beds set at the same distance on the far side of the room, and on the one against the wall sits the first naked guy she has seen in months. She studies him as he reads from a book lying on his lap, uninterested or clueless of her presence, his shoulder-length dark hair covering his face.   
  
The door clicks shut and she’s about to turn, when Raven kicks the back of her knees. Her legs give up on her and Clarke gasps, her arms flailing in vain to grip at something, her body in perfect trajectory to hit the floor on her back. Clearly not satisfied, Raven grabs her head when she’s still in mid-air and pushes down, guiding her in a fast fall and not releasing her until she’s one breath away from the impact. The back of her head smashes against the parquet, the crack resonating in the room in time with the oxygen in Clarke’s lungs leaving her for good. A flash of white pain flows from the back of her head, and Clarke forces herself to breathe with the sick awareness that if this had been a tile floor, her head would have already gone splat.   
  
Raven leans in, her other hand curling around her throat in a silent threat, “Who the fuck are you?”  
  
“Jesus Christ, Rav, do you want every guard in the house to come here?”   
  
The admonition seems to work because Raven closes her eyes, even though the guy didn’t sound as if he were really worried by the eventuality. Clarke tries to will her head to stop pounding, but her attempt gets completely neutralized by Raven’s hand tightening on her throat, closing her airway.   
  
“You have five seconds to tell me why you’re here, or I’ll invite the guards to gangrape you as a welcome.”   
  
“She may like it,” The guy says in a singsong tone.   
  
“Not everyone is as fucked in the head as you, Finn, now shut up.”   
  
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Clarke quickly chokes out, before Finn opens his mouth again and makes Raven even madder. Raven loosens her hold, giving Clarke the green light to continue, “I was kidnapped weeks or months ago and stayed closed in a cell with the two captors until today one of them brought me here.”   
  
It would have been more than enough for her story, but it still stings, so she adds in a softer tone, “I thought he was going to save me.”  
  
Raven does the thing with her eyebrows again, frowning at some thought in her head that’s displeasing her more than looking at Clarke. Then it gets washed away and she sneers, “Let me guess, another victim of white knight Bellamy.”   
  
Finn groans, a light thump suggesting that his head has hit the wall behind him. It’s thanks to a simple play on words that Clarke connects Bellamy to Hotstuff. “Another victim?”   
  
“Gurl, you’re like the tenth this month alone. Did he feed you some crap to make you trust him and then told you that he was going to free you?” Finn asks, the ridicule in his tone so thick that Clarke can’t answer out of the cloak of shame covering her. He gets it anyway, though, because he laughs, and Raven with him.   
  
“Jesus, you poor bitch,” Raven mocks empathy, shaking her head slowly and patting her head with the hand not busy threatening her.   
  
“You’re one to talk,” Finn adds still laughing, and Raven’s hand closes on her throat again.   
  
“I wasn’t a slave and he wasn’t--”   
  
“Yeah yeah, and for how long did you pine over him _after_ you were brought here?”   
  
Clarke taps at Raven’s arm to remind her that she is supposed to be alive to talk, and Raven’s hand releases her skin again, staying in the vicinity for good measure.   
  
“What’s going on? What is this place?” Clarke asks.  
  
“Here is where you’re sent to hone your skills based on the tastes of your buyer, after you’ve been captured and detained for security where Bellamy works. But you’ve skipped the honing phase and were sent in this part of the house, where Cage’s former slaves live. I want to know why,” Raven shifts her position, putting both her knees on the floor, and her hand caresses Clarke’s collarbone.   
  
Clarke’s throat works around a lump she’s trying to gulp down, “Cage bought me?”   
  
Raven rolls her eyes, sitting on the heels of her feet and finally leaving Clarke some space to breathe. She pinches the bridge of her nose, turning toward Finn, “What are we going to do?”  
  
He keeps his eyes on the book he’s reading, fingers hovering over the corner of the page, until he reaches the bottom and turns it. Only then he says, “I don’t think you have anything to fear. The bastard is in love, he won’t replace you.”   
  
“I don’t give a fuck about him being in love with me or anyone else, I can’t lose my position,” Raven takes a deep breath, visibly trying to calculate how much things have gone FUBAR in a couple of hours. Clarke feels almost sorry for her, if only she weren’t busy with her own share of problems.   
  
“Listen,” Clarke starts, “I swear I have no intention of getting in your way, okay? I just want to go home.”  
  
And it’s sad, because she’s not lying. Even with the insistent urge inside her to curl down and be done with everything forever, she still wants to do it at home. A familiar blanket while she shatters for the last time, waiting to see what will be left of her after she has found peace in her head; maybe even her mother doing mum things and hugging her, just that once, going again with the litany that everything will be fine and it won’t ever happen again.   
  
Raven eyes her for a second before standing up, her body still rigid from unrelieved tension, “Let’s make it like this: you tell me everything Cage tells you, and I won’t make your life so much worse than it already is that you’ll beg me to put you out of your misery.”   
  
Clarke slowly nods. First day in her new home: she has made two friends.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Zoadgo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo), for editing it. From crap to actually readable in a matter of minutes. You're a gift.
> 
> And obviously thanks to anyone who will read it, comment it, _kudos it_ , ignore it etc.  
> Feel totally free to contact me here or on [my tumblr](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com)!


End file.
